overview

This profile points to studies about the size and shape of particular online demographics.

It considers questions such as who is online, where are they located, how often and how intensively they are online (more meaningful measures than basic enumations that give equal weight to a single five minute session per month and a two hour session each day), and what are some of the public policy or commercial implications.

Overviews are provided in our Net Metrics & Statistics guide and the separate Marketing guide. There is a more detailed examination of digital divides (internationally and within Australia) in a supplementary profile.

The somewhat starry-eyed The Internet in Everyday Life (Oxford: Blackwell 2002) edited by Barry Wellman & Caroline Haythornthwaite writes about

the second age of the Internet as it descends from the firmament and becomes embedded in everyday life. The first age of the Internet was a bright light shining above everyday concerns. In the euphoria, many analysts lost their perspective. The rapid contraction of the dot.com economy has brought down to earth the once-euphoric belief in the infinite possibility of Internet life.

It is not as if the Internet disappeared. Instead, the light that dazzled overhead has become embedded in everyday things. A reality check is now underway about where the Internet fits into the ways in which people behave offline as well as online. We are moving from a world of Internet wizards to a world of ordinary people routinely using the Internet as an embedded part of their lives. It has become clear that the Internet is a very important thing, but not a special thing. In fact, it is being used more - by more people, in more countries, in more ways.

The following pages - like this site as a whole - attempt to give some sense of those different uses by different groups.

     this profile

This profile is under development. The following pages cover -

normalisation - an overview of how the internet has ceased to be exceptional (in terms of demographics, economics, politics and regulation)

income - information about uptake of the net by different economic groups in Australia and overseas

education - often correlated with different levels of internet use (and with income)

location - contrary to hype about the 'death of distance', geography matters. The page considers the geographical dispersal of domains, servers, users, content creators and funders

gender - normalisation of the online population in advanced economies has been reflected in the erosion of the 'gender divide', so that internet use is not heavily weighted towards young white males with an IT background and a pizza habit

age - an examination of wired kids, teens, silver surfers and other age cohorts

ethnicity - what are the 'ethnic divides' in Australia and other countries, where particular minority groups have a higher degree of internet penetration than the online polulation at large

preference - research and rhetoric about the online gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender population, implausibly tagged as the "marketer's dream audience"

religion - internet use from the perspective of religious affiliations

recreation - who is using the net for entertainment

employment - the net and employment: which businesses and professions are online

politics - is there a 'red/blue' divide in internet use?

criminals - questioning myths about the 'online criminal classes'

     benchmarks

At a global level points of reference are provided by the following figures from 1999 on take-up of information & communication technology and annual electricity consumption -

Other figures are here.

   next page (normalisation)